LSAT 71, Logical Reasoning I, Q12

CONCLUSION: The mountain snowpack in the Rockies will probably melt earlier, which will cause greater floods and less water for summer.

REASONING: Global warming will probably increase winter temperatures in the Rockies. This will cause more precipitation to fall as rain rather than snow.

ANALYSIS: This is actually a pretty good argument. Why does it need strengthening? Because the conclusion is probabilistic. Further evidence will help prove the probability correct.

As for why the argument is pretty good, it has to do with the relevant authority of the climatologist. I’ve written a note on the next page about this. You do not need to know about the note to get 175+, but you may find the information interesting nonetheless.

___________

This answer does show there will be more rain, since the stimulus says more precipitation falls as rain. But this doesn’t prove the conclusion. The problem with the argument is that we don’t know if rain will actually melt the snowpack. The argument just assumes it does. Merely adding more rain doesn’t help prove the point.

CORRECT. The situation in this answer matches the stimulus exactly. So it strengthens the conclusion. The cause is leading to the effect in other mountain regions, so we can expect the same to be true in the Rockies.

This could be true, but how does it strengthen the argument? The argument was talking about the entire Rocky Mountain region, and the effect global warming would have.
This answer talks about specific, milder regions within the Rockies. That doesn’t necessarily tell us what global warming will do. Those mild regions have had thousands of years to adapt, while global warming is happening very fast.

This isn’t even talking about mountains. Irrelevant. Mountain regions could diverge completely from the average.

The stimulus didn’t talk about larger snowpacks. Global warming makes snowpacks melt faster, but they may not be larger.

Note on Relevant Authority on the LSAT

The speaker is a “climatologist” instead of a “politician” or an “environmentalist”. The LSAT has previously used relevant expertise to allow an author to speak from authority. The issue isn’t strictly relevant to answering this question, but make sure you note who’s speaking on LR questions.

This is a strengthen question, which usually indicates a flawed argument. But given the authority of the speaker, this may actually be a good argument. The fact that the speaker is a climatologist certainly makes the argument more compelling than it otherwise would be. We can assume a climatologist has relevant expertise and is correct when they say that winter temperatures will rise in the rockies, and that more precipitation will fall as rain.

We can also believe the speaker when they say this means that the mountain snowpack will probably melt earlier, and cause flooding, etc. So why does this argument need strengthening at all? Because it says “probably”. Probably is a weak statement – it indicates the climatologist isn’t certain in their conclusion. Supporting evidence is always useful for a probabilistic conclusion, no matter the authority of the speaker.

A second anecdote to demonstrate that the identity of a speaker can be relevant: I once challenged question 25, section 3 of LSAT Preptest 64. I received a thorough reply, which included this quote “In the context of journalism, it is a reasonable application of the “principle of charity” in argument interpretation to presume that the information provided by the journalist constitutes a relatively complete picture of the relevant facts.” In other words, the fact that the speaker was a journalist had a small role to play in the question.

It’s possible to overthink these things. I got question 25, section 3 of LSAT Preptest 64 right, very fast. The answer was obvious. It was only when a student questioned me that I noticed a potential flaw. In 99.9% of cases you’ll never need to consider relevant expertise. But know that the speaker’s identity is explicitly part of LSAT questions.

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Comments

I don’t understand why A is not correct. It says that global warming will cause an increase in the average amount of precipitation, and the stimulus says that global warming will cause a greater proportion of the precipitation in the Rockies to fall as rain. Putting those together, you can deduce from A that there will be more rain in the Rockies, overall. If there is more rain, it seems logical that there will be more flooding, and the argument would be strengthened… Can you please explain why this is not correct?

[Note: I’ve edited the original. Here’s what I wrote for A previously.
–A. The argument said rain will cause flooding. This answer says there will be more precipitation, but that could be snow. Global warming has led to more snow in some regions.–
…..this is not correct, because if a greater % of precipation is rain, then more precipitation will lead to more rain]

The main problem with the argument is that it hasn’t made the link between more rain + melting snowpack. B does that.

A does show more rain, you’re right. But since we don’t know rain *will* cause melting + flooding, then more rain isn’t necessarily significant. Maybe the rain will just wash down the mountain harmlessly without melting the snowpack.

Does that make sense? I didn’t find this a difficult question to answer, but I found it tough to explain.

Edit: I looked at the argument again. The right answer doesn’t address the rain/melting gap either. This argument may be relying on the authority of the author as a climatologist.

However, A is still wrong, because it merely adds force to the premise of additional rain, without showing that rain leads to an increase. The conclusion wasn’t about the size of the increase.

I didn’t have any issue with the question from test 64, but when you have time if you don’t mind expanding on that question you challenged…i.e. what answer did the student you mention say was better and why??…that would be great. I checked your page on that question but there weren’t any comments so I’m assuming that convo happened elsewhere. Thanks!

I’ve been looking over this question for almost 10 minutes to try and figure how B supports the argument better than C. I guess I initially thought that because C was discussing the Rockies specifically then it would be better at strengthening this argument because of its specificity (i.e because the argument only discusses the Rockies, then the best support would relate to the same region). However, the only strong reason I can conclude for why B is stronger is because it specifically discusses the “melting snowpacks .. spring flooding … less storable water.. etc.”, whereas C doesn’t do this.

Basically, what I wrote above. There is a difference between a whole region getting warmer, and certain areas within a region being warmer.

Warmer areas have had thousands of years to settle into an equilibrium. If a cold area warms rapidly, that doesn’t mean it will be similar to current warmer areas. C makes a false equivalence between overall warming and how relatively warmer areas behave.

I just wanted to ask a quick question – I was a bit wary about B because it talks about “other mountains regions” and not specifically about the Rocky Mountains that the premise talks about. I am usually vary wary of answer choices that do not accurately match the specific wording of the text. Doesn’t this answer choice slightly raise the possibility that this phenomena may indeed happen in other mountainous regions but not specifically in the Rockies?

You’re right to be wary of shifts between the language of the stimulus and the language of the answer choices. Often, they can be signals of an incorrect answer. However, you can’t eliminate answer choices on that basis alone.

In this case, we’re looking to strengthen a specific cause and effect relationship. One way to do that is to show that relationship exists elsewhere. So, in the stimulus we’re told that when winters are relatively mild in the Rockies, the snowpacks melt more rapidly, leading to greater spring flooding and less storeable water. (B), the correct answer, indicates that cause-effect relationship exists in other mountainous regions as well:
Cause: Snowpacks melt more rapidly
Effect: Greater spring flooding and less storeable water

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